George Kelly’s personal construct theory

George Kelly 's Personal Construct Theory

and Fixed Role Therapy

George Kelly (1905-1967 ) was an American psychologist who developed a personality theory called the personal construct psychology . The psychologist did not talk about development from birth to adulthood Rather , his theory sees human beings as forms of motion regardless of age . According to Kelly 's view , the human `becoming ' is a highly individualized process of psychological development . In this process each child and adult continuously extends , revises , and reorganizes the system of meaning , emotion , and action schemes that he or she

br constructs . With an emphasis on the individual ways in which humans construct and reconstruct the meaning of their lives , Kelly presents his theory with an image of persons as developing scientists . These scientists have their own distinctive theories of self and the world that enable them to understand and anticipate the repetitive themes of their lives . And , as mentioned before , these theories of self and the world are constantly undergoing change through construction , testing revising , and expanding (Neimeyer , 2006 Fransella and Neimeyer , 2005

Kelly 's personal construct theory of psychology is organized into a fundamental postulate and eleven corollaries . The fundamental postulate says , in Kelly 's words "A person 's processes are psychologically channelized by the ways in which he anticipates events " The processes in this definition refer to an individual 's experiences , thoughts feelings , behaviors , and everything that remains . All processes are determined by the person 's anticipation of the self , of others , and of the world in general . Hence , the anticipation leads to hypotheses experiments , and observation , that is , from anticipation to experience and behavior (Boeree , 1997

GEORGE KELLY 'S PERSONAL CONSTRUCT THEORY AND FIXED ROLE THERAPY Page 2

The eleven corollaries in Kelly 's personal construct theory of personality detail the process of construing , the structure of the personal construct systems , in addition to the social embeddedness of human knowing (Neimeyer . The first corollary is the construction corollary , which states that an individual anticipates events by construing their replications . The second corollary , the experience corollary , is explained by Kelly thus "A person 's construction system varies as he successively construes the replication of events Therefore , past experiences are important . The third corollary is the dichotomy corollary which states that an individual 's construction system is made up of a limited number of dichotomous constructs . The organization corollary is the fourth corollary "Each person characteristically evolves , for his convenience in anticipating events a construction system embracing ordinal relationships between constructs " Kelly describes the fifth corollary thus "A construct is convenient for the anticipation of a finite range of events only " The sixth corollary , modulation corollary , states that certain constructs are permeable while the rest are relatively impermeable , and hence , the variation in an individual 's construction system is limited by the permeability of constructs . The choice corollary , the individuality corollary , the commonality corollary , the fragmentation corollary , and the sociality corollary are the remaining corollaries - all explaining the fundamental method by which human beings understand themselves others , and...